Echo Park by Michael Connelly Page B

referring to the Investigative Chronology, a master listing kept by date and time of all aspects of a case, ranging from an accounting of detectives’ time and movements to notations on routine phone calls and messages to media inquiries and tips from citizens. Usually, these were handwritten with all manner of shorthand and abbreviations employed as they were updated throughout each day, sometimes hourly. Then, when a page became full, it was typed up on a form called a 51, which would be complete and legible when and if the case ever moved into the courts, and lawyers, judges and juries needed to review the investigative files. The original handwritten pages were then discarded.
    “What about them?” Bosch asked.
    “I’m looking at the last line on page fourteen. The listing is for September twenty-ninth, nineteen ninety-three, at six-forty p.m. Must’ve been quitting time. The initials on the entry are JE.”
    Bosch felt the bile rising in his throat. Whatever it was Olivas was getting at, he was enjoying milking it.
    “Obviously,” he said impatiently, “that would’ve been my partner at the time, Jerry Edgar. What’s the entry say, Olivas?”
    “It says . . . I’ll just read it. It says, ‘Robert Saxon DOB eleven/three/’seventy-one. Saw
Times
story. Was at Mayfair and saw MG alone. Nobody following.’ It gives Saxon’s phone number and that’s all it says. But that’s enough, Hotshot. You know what it means?”
    Bosch did. He had just given the name Robert Saxon to Kiz Rider to background. It was either an alias or perhaps the real name of the man known currently as Raynard Waits. That name on the 51s now connected Waits to the Gesto case. It also meant that thirteen years ago Bosch and Edgar had at least a shot at Waits/Saxon. But for reasons he didn’t recall or didn’t know about they never took it. He did not recall the specific entry in the 51s. There were dozens of pages in the Investigative Chronology filled with one- and two-line entries. Remembering them all--even with his frequent returns to the investigation over the years--would have been impossible.
    It took him a long moment to find his voice.
    “That’s the only mention in the murder book?” he asked.
    “That I’ve seen,” Olivas said. “I’ve been through everything twice. I even missed it the first time through. Then the second time I said, ‘Hey, I know that name.’ It’s an alias Waits used back in the early nineties. It should be in the files you have.”
    “I know. I saw it.”
    “It meant he called you guys, Bosch. The killer called you, and you and your partner blew it. Looks like nobody ever followed up with him or ran his name through the box. You had the killer’s alias and a phone number and didn’t do anything. ’Course, you didn’t know he was the killer. Just some citizen calling in about what he saw. He must’ve been trying to play you guys in some way, trying to find out about the case. Only Edgar didn’t play. It was late in the day and he probably wanted to get to that first martini.”
    Bosch said nothing and Olivas was only too happy to continue to fill the void.
    “Too bad, you know? Maybe this whole thing could’ve ended right then. I guess we’ll ask Waits about it in the morning.”
    Olivas and his petty world no longer mattered to Bosch. The barbs couldn’t penetrate the thick, dark cloud that was already coming down on him. For he knew that if the name Robert Saxon had come up in the Gesto investigation, then it should have been routinely run through the computer. It would have scored a match in the alias database and taken them to Raynard Waits and his prior arrest for prowling. That would have made him a suspect. Not just a person of interest like Anthony Garland. A strong suspect. And that would have undoubtedly taken the investigation in a whole new direction.
    But that never happened. Apparently neither Edgar nor Bosch had run the name through the box. It was an oversight that